


Feeling Sun (I'm No Longer One)

by merle_p



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alcohol, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Apologies, Brotherly Bonding, Car Accidents, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Post-Season/Series 05, Reconciliation, Reunions, Road Trips, Shameless Big Bang, Sibling Bonding, Skinny Dipping, Spontaneous Decisions, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-10 18:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4401857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/pseuds/merle_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's summer in Chicago, and Carl Gallagher is finally released from prison. His brothers pick him up in the fancy car that Lip has stolen – no, borrowed – from his professor, and life would be good, if not for the fact that Ian and Lip are both distracted and weighed down by their regrets about past mistakes, about unfinished business, about friends and lovers lost. Because Carl is a horrible (or maybe great?) influence, they soon find themselves on the road, on an odyssey to find Mickey and Mandy Milkovich, the siblings who seem to have left the Southside of Chicago – and the men of the Gallagher family – behind for good. On their trip, the Gallagher brothers travel down memory lane, and realize that maybe Mickey and Mandy are not the only people they need to reconnect with to regain what they lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feeling Sun (I'm No Longer One)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Shameless BigBang 2015!
> 
> The wonderful, brilliant gallavichisforever made some truly gorgeous art for this fic - please go and check it out here:   
> [Gifset](http://gallavichisforever.tumblr.com/post/125718100312/read-the-fic-listen-to-the-fanmix) & [Fanmix](http://gallavichisforever.tumblr.com/post/125717996002/read-the-fic-see-the-photogif-set-songs-01-fell)
> 
> The lovely and talented romanticalgirl betaed for me, and offered invaluable feedback and comments.
> 
> The title of this story is a line from the White Stripes song "I Can Learn."

**CARL (Friday, June 26, 2pm)**

The day he's released from prison is the day Carl violates his probation, Ian skips work, and Lip steals his professor’s car. 

“Borrowed it,” Lip says indignantly, and pulls into traffic. “I didn’t steal it, I borrowed it. She promised me ages ago that I could take it to go get Carl when he got released. Just because she and her wimp of a husband found a younger, more willing boytoy doesn’t mean her word isn’t valid anymore.”

“Semantics,” Ian argues, and tugs on Lip’s earlobe, probably because he knows how much Lip hates it. Lip slaps his hand away and punches him in the arm.

“It’s not semantics, it’s the principle,” he insists, and yelps when Ian hits him back. 

“Stubborn fucker.”

“Asswipe.”

“Loser.”

“Bastard.”

Carl, in the back seat, thinks he's got every right to feel annoyed. For months his family has been telling him how much it sucks that he got himself locked up, how much they miss him, how much they are looking forward to having him back, yadda yadda blah blah. And now that he finally got released on parole, his brothers are too busy insulting each other to even take notice of his existence. They could at least pretend to be a little more excited to have him back. 

“You could at least pretend to be a little more excited to have me back,” he tells them. Predictably, they both look at him with matching guilty expressions: Lip trying to catch his eye in the rear mirror, Ian turning around in his seat. 

“Sorry, buddy,” Lip says and pulls a face. 

“Lip is just cranky because he isn't getting laid anymore,” Ian says confidentially and dodges the shoulder punch Lip is trying to land without driving the car off the road. 

“Why not?” Carl asks curiously, and Lip huffs. 

“Apparently I’m not enough of a bi-curious exhibitionist.”

“Bi ex what?” Carl asks, because he doesn’t understand a word of what his brother is saying. 

It can't be anything good, though, because Lip's sole response is to groan and fumble for his cigarettes. 

Ian smirks. “His ladyfriend’s husband wanted to watch them fuck,” he says gleefully. “And Lip is too much of a prude to have sex with another man in the same room.”

“That's not true,” Carl points out. “I’ve watched Lip have sex in the same room dozens of times.”

“That’s different,” Lip says decidedly, and steers with his elbows while he lights his smoke. “You’re my brother.”

Ian almost chokes on his laughter. “Because that makes it so much better, right?”

"I've watched you and Mickey have sex, too," Carl adds, just for fairness' sake. Lip snorts, but Ian falls silent, and Carl remembers a little bit too late that Ian and Mickey don't actually have sex anymore. Grown-ups are weird when it comes to talking about their exes. 

"And now you also know why Ian is cranky," Lip says, when Ian leans his head against the passenger window and stares gloomily outside. "He misses Mickey."

Carl raises his brows. "I thought _you_ broke up with _him_ ," he tells Ian, and can't help sounding a bit reproachful. Mickey was solid and cool as shit, and watching him and Ian blow each other in Ian's narrow single bed in the middle of the night, thinking they were being quiet and sneaky, had been far more educational for his knowledge of gay sex than his family's awkward explanations and his short-time stay with the gay pod people ever could have been. 

Ian grunts and keeps staring out of the window. Lip shrugs, but even he isn't smiling anymore. 

"He did," he says, "but now he regrets it."

"So why don't you just tell him that?" Carl asks. 

Ian pulls up his shoulders. "It's not that simple," he says. "He left."

"What do you mean, he left?" Carl asks, and Ian sighs.

"He disappeared, months ago. Right before Terry got released from prison." He hits his forehead lightly against the glass. "Can't say that I blame him."

Carl thinks no one could blame Mickey for wanting to avoid Terry Milkovich. He'd probably have hitchhiked to Louisiana to become an alligator hunter by now if Terry fucking Milkovich was his father. Carl thinks that's saying something, considering that his own father isn't going to win any awards for good parenting any time soon – or ever, to be honest. Still, something about the defeated slump of Ian's shoulders makes him wonder if avoidance of shitty parental units is all there was to Mickey's escape. More importantly, however, it makes him want to change the subject, and change it quickly, because seeing Ian downcast like this reminds him a bit too much of Ian's depressive phases, and that's not a memory he needs to revisit anytime soon. 

"Can we get fast food?" he asks, and Lip throws him a quick look over his shoulder.

"They don't feed you in there?" he asks, in his special Lip voice that's teetering somewhere between mocking and concerned, and it hits Carl like a punch to the gut, the realization how much he's missed his dumbass brothers. 

"Not Five Guys, they didn't," he says, thinking of the awful mush they'd served in the cafeteria day after day, and how he'd been lying awake in his bunk at night, dreaming of boxed mac'n'cheese and stolen lasagna from the college cafeteria. 

"I guess we have something to celebrate, right?" Lip says, and turns left onto East 51st Street. 

"Hell, yes we do," Ian says slowly, as if he's gradually coming back to himself. "Let's get some fucking burgers."

 

**LIP (Friday, June 26, 3pm)**

Lip already has two missed calls from Helene, and his phone is ringing again. 

They'd swung by the Five Guys on 53rd for burgers, fries and soda, then they had made a pit stop at the gas station down the street to swipe a six-pack before driving to Burnham Park. It's a weekday, so the park isn't too crowded, and they found a quiet spot down by the lake, away from the more frequented paths, where no one batted an eye when they spread out on the grass with their fast food and the beer that they made a half-assed attempt at hiding in an old plastic bag. 

He and Ian got around to unwrapping their burgers, but they soon abandoned their food in favor of watching Carl, who tore into his cheeseburger like it was his first meal in weeks. He ended up eating half of Ian's fries as well, stuffing them into his mouth with both hands, barely pausing to swallow, not caring about the ketchup he kept smearing all over his face.

Then he suddenly dropped the greasy paper bag, jumped to his feet, and ran around in circles, whooping , down to the lake, back and around them, scaring a nanny with two kids in a stroller and a couple of ducks into fleeing the scene. Lip could almost physically feel the relief emanating from his brother in waves, and caught himself smiling without meaning to. Eventually, Carl wore himself out and flopped down on the grass, where he's been content to lie for the last fifteen minutes – perhaps dozing, maybe staring at the sky. 

Lip reluctantly drags his eyes away from his brother, back to his phone. 

"Guess I should make sure she's not sending the cops after us," he says half-heartedly. Ian makes a face that's probably supposed to be vaguely supportive, and Lip takes the time to flip him off good-naturedly before he hits the call-back button. 

"Phillip," Helene's voice is cool and smooth, "was it really necessary to steal my car?"

"I didn't steal it," Lip says and sticks out his tongue when Ian rolls his eyes at him. It's the principle of the thing. "I borrowed it."

"You left me a note pinned to the garage door," she sighs. "Look, I understand that you feel upset, but …"

"This is not what this is about," Lip interrupts her before she can keep going, because he so does not want to get into this. "You told me I could take the car to pick up my brother from juvie, so that's what I did. Where I come from, people stand by their word, you know?"

She laughs without much humor. "Where you come from, huh?" she says. "So we are back to that now? Well, Phillip, people also steal cars where you come from."

"Jesus," he says, and drags a shaking hand through his curls. "You're going to get your fucking car back."

"Really?" she says skeptically, "so when can I expect it?"

"For god’s sake, you have two other perfectly fine cars and a fucking moped. Do you really care that fucking much about your stupid BMW? You'll get it back eventually." He pauses, tries to steady his breath. "And I'd very much appreciate it if you wouldn't call the police," he continues. "Because I just got my brother back, and if you send the cops after us, he'll go straight back to juvie, and I'd rather not see that happen."

"Are you threatening me?" she asks, an odd twist to her voice, and Lip clenches his free hand into a fist to keep himself from screaming. 

"I'm not," he says coolly. "But I could, if that would fit better into your image of me. Either way, I'm sure the dean of undergraduate studies would love to hear about the time I went down on you in your office. And I met the editor of the school paper at a party a while back. He's not so bad, for a preppy rich kid, you know. I could give him a call, too, if you wanted me to. I'm sure he'd appreciate me helping him out with a story about sexual harassment on college campuses."

Helene is quiet for a while. "Fine," she says eventually, and she doesn't sound quite so hostile anymore, rather quiet and resigned. "You can borrow the car. Just make sure to get it back to me in one piece. I know what street parking in your neighborhood can do to a BMW."

"Fuck you," Lip says, but she's already hung up. It's probably better that way. 

"You okay?" Ian asks, and Lip looks up at him in surprise. It's been a while since Ian has asked him that. Lip has been doing most of the asking lately, even though he knew that Ian didn't exactly appreciate it, even though sometimes he was worried that all he was doing was making it worse. The idea that his brother still cares enough to ask suddenly almost makes him cry. 

"Yeah, fine," he says, but he lets Ian see him drag his knuckles over his eyes to disperse the treacherous wetness clinging to his lashes.

"Uh-uh," Ian says, disbelievingly, and Lip has to laugh. If it sounds more like a sob, no one here is going to tell. 

"Fuck," he says finally. "Is this what Mandy felt like?"

"What?" Ian asks, eyes narrow. "What about Mandy?"

Lip shrugs, already regrets bringing it up. He knows how protective Ian is of his friend, and he'd rather not ruin this perfectly nice afternoon by giving his brother yet another chance to bite his head off. 

"It's just – I don't know what's wrong with me," he admits quietly. "My relationships are like – I don't know. Either I'm too invested and trying too hard, and the woman treats me like shit. Or the girl is too invested, and I feel like they are trying to run my life, and I treat them like shit."

Ian raises his brows. “Wow, are you only just now figuring that out?”

"Fuck you," Lip grumbles and looks down at his hands. Ian makes a noise that's somewhere between apologetic and amused, forcing Lip to look up again. 

"Well, it’s true. Except Amanda kind of was running your life," Ian says. "Mandy just didn't know how to be your girlfriend."

"Yeah, I know," Lip says, resigned. He looks around to make sure the coast is clear before he reaches for the plastic bag, throwing a beer at Ian and rolling another one in Carl's general direction. When he opens his own bottle, he realizes that his hands are still shaking.

"You're a good brother," Ian says casually, and Lip stares at him, wide-eyed. 

"I think that's why I used to get so mad at you for screwing things up with your girls." Ian isn't looking at Lip anymore, staring across the lake as he takes a pull from his beer. "You do a decent job of being our brother, how can you be so bad at being someone's boyfriend?" 

Lip lifts the bottle to his mouth and swallows while he thinks about his answer. "I guess I just don't believe in it," he says. "I just don't believe it's something we get to have, you know? This," he says and gestures, trying to encompass himself and Ian and Carl, the lake and the fries and the beer, "this I can believe in. Family, you know? Us, sticking together. It's all there ever was. Anything else? Anything else just ends in screaming matches and lies, and people leaving and tearing each other down."

"Wow," Ian says dryly. "You know, this sounds an awful lot like a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"Yeah well," Lip says. "You've always been the romantic between the two of us."

Ian doesn't disagree, but doesn't look like he's particularly happy with Lip's assessment either. Lip can’t blame him: romance hasn’t exactly worked out for Ian all that great lately. 

"So now that you and the lady professor are done," Ian finally says, not even trying to be subtle about his deflection, "and Amanda isn't talking to you – all of a sudden you miss Mandy?" He doesn't really sound accusing, mostly he just seems curious, but Lip still feels the familiar urge to defend himself. 

"It's not like that," he says, trying not to sound too petulant. "I'm not – I don't even know if we'd been that great together. You know, if Karen hadn't be there for me to be hung up on, and for Mandy to run over with her car. Don't get me wrong, the sex was awesome –" he has to laugh a little at Ian's grimace. "But we were friends long before we started fucking. I mean," he swallows, looks down. "Remember that summer when we stole the laser? We'd hang out together, the three of us." 

Ian raises his brows. "You mean, until you and I stopped talking to each other?" he asks dryly. 

"Yeah," Lip nods quickly, forcing himself not to think of the constant pressure he had felt on his chest that summer, whenever he'd watch Ian's face close off, turn away from him without a word. "Before that." He shrugs. "I mean, I was so angry, always angry about Karen, but – the only time I remember feeling happy was those nights, walking home together under the L. You, me, Mandy. So yes, I miss her. I miss her a lot."

“Mandy was alright,” Carl suddenly announces thoughtfully, and Lip jumps a little. He hadn't even realized Carl was listening. “She never wore pants around the house.”

Ian snorts, and Lip glares at him half-heartedly. “She had other qualities too,” he says wistfully.

“Yeah, well, if you miss her that much,” Ian says, sounding mildly annoyed, and Lip can't even blame him, because they’ve had this conversation too many times, “why don’t you go and tell her that?”

“Because she left,” Lip retorts, “she’s in Indiana.”

Ian rolls his eyes. “Yes, she is in Indiana,” he says slowly. “Not India. It’s like a four hour drive, man. You’ve driven to Indiana in a freaking ice-cream truck for fucking fireworks.”

Lip sniffs and tells himself that he’s not being childish. "Yeah well, right back at you."

"What?" Ian says, sounding confused, and Lip raises his brows at him, because Ian is a lot of things, but he's usually not a hypocrite. 

"Well, Mickey is in Indiana, too," he says slowly, and watches in surprise as Ian straightens, looking alarmed. 

"What?" he says, and there is a hysterical tone to his voice that makes Lip frown. "What do you mean, Mickey is in Indiana?"

"Well, he moved in with Mandy," he says, wondering if he should worry about Ian's state of mind. "And Mandy is in Indiana. _Ergo_ ," he concludes, feeling inexplicably comforted when he sees Ian's predictable scowl at his use of Latin, "Mickey is in Indiana, too."

"How do you know that?" Ian asks suspiciously, and Lip shrugs. 

"Iggy Milkovich mentioned it."

"Iggy?" Ian says, and now he looks like Lip is the one whose sanity is on the brink. "Since when do you talk to Iggy Milkovich?"

Lip makes an effort to roll his eyes at his brother. Secretly, though, he has to admit that he has been wondering the same thing, ever since he realized that somehow, Iggy Milkovich has become one of the few people not related to him by blood he still has actual conversations with. At first he considered the possibility that Iggy still felt bad about leaving Lip to fend for himself after they blew up the coffee shop together; but after a while he started to suspect that it had more to do with the fact that Iggy simply misses his siblings and is just as fucking lonely as Lip feels most of the time. 

"He hangs out at the Alibi," he says eventually. "We play pool, sometimes. Commiserate about annoying little brothers," he adds, in an attempt to lighten the mood, but the joke falls flat. 

"I'm sorry," he finally says, because Ian looks increasingly upset, "I thought you knew. I swear, I would have told you if I realized you didn't." He swallows, looks away. 

"I just figured you didn't want to talk about it." _With me_ , he adds quietly in his head. They have been doing better lately, so much better, with Ian back on his meds and in treatment, with Lip back home for the summer and out of that fucking dysfunctional student-teacher open marriage voyeuristic threesome clusterfuck. But they are also miles away from the times when Ian would get annoyed at Lip for waiting a few hours before telling him about a blowjob, and that hurts like crazy to think about. 

He thinks Ian must see that too, because he waves him off, looking resigned. "Not your fault," he says tiredly, and stares sadly at his beer. "Mandy didn't tell me either."

"So," Carl says, and when Lip looks at him, he sees that Carl is lying on his belly, propped up on his elbows and watching them intently. "Mandy is in Indiana, and Mickey is in Indiana, and you both miss them, and we have a fucking awesome car. Why are we not on our way to Indiana right now?"

"Uhm," Lip makes blankly, and he actually has to think for a moment to come up with a reply. "Maybe because you're on parole and not allowed to leave the state?"

Carl grins and scrambles to a seated position. "No one is going to notice," he says. "The meeting with my probation officer isn't until Tuesday."

"Because I have a shift at the diner later today," Ian chimes in, and Lip is glad that Ian seems to agree that this is a pretty stupid idea.

Carl shrugs. "Dude," he says. "I'm sure you can call in sick for a day."

Lip pulls a face. "So how about the fact that the car I'm driving belongs to my ex?"

Carl rolls his eyes. "You told her you'd bring it back eventually, right? I bet driving the car to Indiana is safer than street parking in Southside."

"He's got a point there," Ian says slowly. Lip looks at Ian. Ian looks back. Neither of them says anything, but Lip's pretty sure they are both thinking the same thing: It probably doesn't bode well for their sanity that they are seriously considering Carl's suggestion. It's not that Carl doesn't mean well, or that he doesn't, on occasion, actually have good ideas. It's just that his plans also tend to end in broken bones, property damage and the occasional dead cat. 

Lip sighs. "Do we even have money for gas?" he asks. "I'm not going to start driving if it means getting stranded with an empty tank in the middle of nowhere." 

Ian starts going through the pockets of his too-tight jeans, wriggling back and forth so he can actually slip a hand into his back pockets. 

"Forty-four, forty-five, forty-six dollars, and twenty cents," he announces, dropping crumbled bills and a handful of coins into the grass. Lip manages to produce another sixteen bucks and the change from their fast-food run. He shrugs. It should be enough. 

"You have your meds with you?" he finally asks, and it's a sign of how far they've gotten that Ian just nods, not offended by his question. 

"Yep," he says firmly. "Three days worth, like always, in case of emergencies."

Lip sighs and rubs his face. "Well," he says, looks at Carl's cheerfully challenging grin, and Ian's skeptically hopeful expression. "Guess it's been a while since we've done something seriously stupid, huh?"

"Hey, cheer up," Carl says, and pokes him with a pointy elbow. "What's the worst that could happen?"

Lip raises his brows. "Really?" he says. "I assume that's a rhetorical question."

"I don't know what rhetorical means," Carl shrugs innocently, even though Lip is pretty sure that he's playing dumb on purpose. "I know that we could already be on our way instead of talking."

"Alright then," Ian says, and climbs to his feet. "Let's get this show on the road."

 

**IAN (Friday, June 26, 6pm)**

Four hours is not that long of a drive – it's nice, really, with the windows rolled down and the A/C blasting, the sun warm against the arm he sticks out of the car and the wind playful in his hair. It's long enough, though, to start thinking about Mickey, and Ian cannot quite stop himself from pondering all the ways in which Mickey might react to their sudden appearance, on a scale from one to forcing them to leave at gun point. It's long enough to remember that the last time he went on an impromptu road trip, he had Mickey's son in the back seat and his entire family looking for him.

He fiddles with the dial, gives up on finding a station that's not country, Christian pop, or NPR, and switches the radio off with a frustrated groan. His fingers start skittering across the dashboard, exploring alternative possibilities for playing music. There is a USB port, but neither of them owns an mp3-player, and he can't find a USB cord to hook up a device anyway. 

"There are some CDs in the glove compartment, I think," Lip finally says. He's steering with his right, left hand holding a cigarette and hanging out of the window. Ian fleetingly considers borrowing a smoke, then shoves down the urge quickly. Being nervous is not an excuse to fall back into old habits, as tempting as it is. 

He focuses on his search instead, and finally finds the CD wallet behind the owner's manual, several Kleenex packages and an old lipstick. 

"Bach? Haydn? Mozart?" he reads as he flips through the binder, incredulously. "Rach – what?"

"Rachmaninoff," Lip supplies off-handedly, without even having to check. "Bit too cheesy for my taste, but hey, you're the one with the soft spot for Eastern European."

Ian rolls his eyes and doesn't bother pointing out that if Mickey counts as Ukrainian, Mandy does too – and anyway, their tastes are not as different as Lip likes to pretend. He focuses on the obvious instead: "How the hell did you end up fucking a chick who's got nothing but classical music in her car?" 

Lip laughs, and for once, there is nothing wistful in his expression. Ian thinks it might be a sign that he is actually starting to get over this thing. "Don't ask me," Lip says. "Maybe people just start liking this stuff when they grow up – a sign of maturity or some bullshit."

"Maturity? Hah, you were banging a MILF, dude," Ian grins. "You do realize that you are never allowed to give me shit about Lloyd ever again?"

Lip frowns. "You were fifteen, man," he protests. "I'm twenty. That still makes him more of a pervert."

"Yeah, well,” Ian smirks, “at least he never made his wife watch us fuck.”

"Urgh," Lip says. "I did not need that image in my head."

"See?" Ian retorts. "Now you know how I feel."

Lip looks like he wants to be offended, but can't quite muster the negative energy that would require. "I think there's more interesting stuff in the back," he says instead, and Ian flips the wallet on its head. What he finds – Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan – is indeed a mild improvement to all the classical shit, but all it does is make him think somewhat wistfully of Mickey's odd collection of heavy metal and indie rock, the scattered pile of worn-down cassette tapes with hand-written labels Mickey used to defend stubbornly against Ian’s gentle mocking. 

Ian blinks furiously and is about to fling the binder to the side when a familiar label catches his eye. 

"Huh." He slips the disc out of the sleeve and holds it up for Lip to see. Lip turns his head to take a look, and Ian can see his eyes widen. 

"Huh," Lip echoes, a wry twist to his mouth. Ian looks back at the CD, torn between conflicting emotions, but eventually he inserts it into the player with a sigh. He isn't entirely sure he actually wants to listen to it, but he also can't quite bring himself to simply put it back. 

"That sounds familiar," Carl says from the back seat as the first song starts playing. He's scooting forward so that he can prop his arms onto the front seats’ backrests, leaning in through the middle. 

"Didn't think you'd remember that," Lip says, sounding surprised. "You must have been – what, two?"

Ian does a quick count in his head and nods. That seems about right. "It's _The White Stripes_ ," he explains, leaning back in his seat so that Carl can understand him over the beat of the music. "Frank and Monica took us on a road trip in the van that summer. Well," he concedes. "A very short road trip. Ended when they got picked up by the cops for public indecency somewhere in Wisconsin." He tries to shake off the unreasonable melancholia with a shrug. "We mostly spent it making sure you and Debbie got fed and didn't run into traffic, because Frank and Monica were stoned out of their minds the entire time. It was nice while it lasted, though," he adds, wistful despite himself. "One of the better summers."

"I don't remember that at all," Carl says, sounding disappointed.

"You were barely a toddler. I'm surprised you remember the music." Ian smiles at his brother. "They had the album on tape, kept playing it on repeat the whole trip." 

Lip laughs. "And the moment they switched it off, Debbie would start singing _Fell in Love with a Girl_ ," he groans. "I had fucking dreams about this song."

"Hmm." Carl looks oddly sad, and Ian can't tell if it's because this is a memory he doesn't share with his brothers, or because there is basically zero chance their parents will take them on a road trip like that ever again. He turns back towards the front of the car when he can't stand to see the forlorn look on his brother’s face anymore, and starts drumming his thumb against the plane of his thigh in time with the rhythm of the song. 

Then _Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground_ comes on, and for some reason that makes him think of Mickey again. He rolls up the window so he can lean his forehead against the glass, and he closes his eyes, feels the vibration of the engine echo in his head. He hasn't talked to Mickey since the day they broke up, the day he came back from his ill-fated visit at Monica's. Truth is, he doesn't remember very much about that time, knows that he can't even recall everything he said, although he is fairly certain that it was hurtful, cruel and mean, because the one image that got stuck in his head is the expression on Mickey's face when he told him it was over, the absolute defeat in his eyes. Everything else is hazy though, the memory blurred by the veil of depression that was weighing him down, and the better he gets, the further removed he feels from the things he did and said – as if they are someone else's memories, as if he's watching a movie of someone else's life. Sometimes he wonders how it's possible to feel so guilty for something he can't even quite remember doing all that well. 

"You know that I don't actually know where I'm going," Lip suddenly says, drawing him out of his spiraling thoughts. "I hope you have an address."

"I do," Ian nods, and fumbles for his phone. "Mandy sent it when she moved. After Kenyatta left with that skanky waitress from Bloomington." He punches the address into the navigation system (because yes, it is that kind of car) and waits for the device to calculate a route. 

"We are like half an hour out," he finally announces, and Carl's head pops up from the back seat again. 

"Are we gonna be there soon?" he asks.

"How old are you, five?" Lip asks, and Carl crosses his arms over his chest and pouts. 

"I need to piss, man," he says. "And I'm hungry again."

"Chill, buddy," Ian says lightly, because mediating between Carl and Lip definitely beats freaking out about his potential reunion with Mickey. "We're almost there."

The address turns out to be a mostly decent house in a mostly decent street of Columbus, Indiana. For a given value of decent, sure, but since their bar for this kind of thing is generally set pretty low, 'decent' seems like an appropriate description. Ian allows himself to feel tentatively optimistic up to the point where they knock on the door to apartment no. 3 on the second floor of the building. The woman who opens the door is black and heavily pregnant and most certainly not a Milkovich. 

"Can I help you?" the woman asks, wary but not entirely unfriendly. 

"We're here for Mandy?" Ian explains, and watches with growing suspicion as her face doesn't show any sign of recognition.

"Sorry," she shakes her head. "No Mandy here." 

"But this is her apartment," Ian insists, because he _knows_ this is the house Mandy had told him about in her texts. 

"No one named Mandy lives here," the woman repeats, loudly and slowly, stressing every syllable as if she thinks it's the only way of getting through to him. 

"Are you sure you got the right address, Ian?" Lip asks, ever the reasonable one, and Ian glares at him. 

"Yes, I know it's the right address, I'm not stupid, okay?" he hisses. He ignores the woman's skeptical look and the way Carl shifts just a tiny bit closer to Lip. "It's – she texted me when she got here, and I sent her a postcard once. She told me she got it."

"Okay, okay," Lip says placatingly, and Ian knows it's irrational, the way that makes him want to yell at his brother even more. 

"How long have you lived here, ma'am?" Lip asks, all smooth politeness and charming smile, and the woman rolls her eyes at him. 

"Couple months," she says. "And don't ma'am me, for Christ's sake. It's Meghan, okay?"

"Okay, Meghan," Lip says, dropping the act from one moment to the next. "Do you know anything about the person who lived here before you moved in?" 

"Oh," she says slowly, nodding as if she's just remembering something. "Oh, that's who you are looking for? Dark hair, emo goth vibe, always angry?"

Ian thinks that maybe he should feel offended on Mandy's behalf at the description, but it is not entirely inaccurate, and mostly he's too relieved to hear that they may not have come down here for nothing to work up any real indignation. 

"That does sound like her," he concedes, and Meghan tilts her head. 

"Never got her first name," she says thoughtfully, "but her last name sounded Polish or something …"

"Milkovich," Ian fills in, and she nods. 

"That's the one," she says. "So that's the girl you're looking for?"

"Looks like it," Lip says quickly. "You know what happened to her?"

"She moved out," Meghan replies, with a hint of _duh_ in her voice. "Said she was moving in with her 'brother'," she adds, making air quotes with her hands. "Not sure why they thought they had to lie to me," she shrugs, pointing at her pregnant belly. "I mean, that's my third one, and I've never been married."

Ian opens his mouth, not even sure what he's going to say, but Lip beats him to it. 

"What did her 'brother' look like?" he asks, mimicking Meghan's use of air quotes, completely ignoring the glare that Ian directs at the side of his head. 

She smirks. "Short," she says. "And he seemed kind of angry, too."

Carl snorts quietly. Ian is pretty sure he's trying to keep it down for his sake, and isn’t quite sure whether that makes him feel grateful or annoyed. 

"Did they leave you an address or anything?" Lip asks, and Meghan shrugs again. 

"They did, actually. In case there was mail for them," she admits, but her voice takes on a careful tone. "How did you say you know her again? I mean, don't get me wrong, the guy called my son a 'little fucker' to his face, so I'm not feeling awfully protective of them. But I'd still feel kind of shitty if it turned out that you are after them because of a gambling debt or something, and I'd find out from the news that you went and shot them both in the head."

"Please," Carl huffs. "If we wanted to kill them, we wouldn't have told you who we are." 

She raises her brows at him. "That would be much more convincing if you had actually given me your names."

"We're their friends," Ian says desperately, and scrambles for his phone. He is not – they got this far, he is not going to leave without an address. "We are friends, okay? Look, I –" he fumbles with the touchscreen, scrolls through his pictures. 

"Here," he says, and holds the phone up for her to see. "That's Mandy and me," he says. If Meghan's confused by the fact that they are both sticking their tongues out in the picture, she doesn't say. "And that's Mandy and Lip," he continues, flipping to the next picture. Lip goes kind of still next to him, and Ian remembers that he never showed them the photos he took of the both of them that one morning, sitting next to each other on the back stairs of the Gallagher home in t-shirts and boxers, shoulders touching, sharing a mug of coffee and a cigarette. 

"And that," he says and switches back to his screensaver, the one he cannot bring himself to change, even though it means feeling a stab of regret every time he switches on his phone: "That's Mickey and me." 

Meghan stares at the last picture for a long time. "Huh," she finally says, "so I'm guessing her 'brother' was actually her brother. Who would've thought." She shrugs. "Fine," she says. "I'll give you the address. You can do me a favor and take them a couple of letters, too. Saves me the trouble of forwarding them." She looks them up and down. "Wait here," she says, and closes the door in their faces, but she's back moments later with a short stack of envelopes and a scrap of paper that she relinquishes to Ian without further protest. 

Ian squints at the note, recognizing Mandy's loopy scrawl that still hasn't gotten easier to decipher with time. Lip steps up behind him, reading along over his shoulder, close enough that his breath tickles Ian's neck.

"Harrodsburg, Kentucky," Lip reads, and only when Ian hears him say it, he realizes what that means, his heart sinking. 

"They are …" 

"… not in Indiana anymore," Lip confirms from behind him, and Ian can sense him raise a hand to cover his face. "Of course they're not."

 

**LIP (Friday, June 26, 9pm)**

“Everything is fine,” Lip says, talking over Fiona’s concerned questions in his most reassuring voice. He prods the edge of the flames with his left flip-flop carefully. “Carl just wanted to do something cool for his first night in freedom, so we are going to crash with this college buddy of mine."

"Sure," Fiona says slowly, but Lip can hear the disappointment in her voice clearly over the line. "I was just really looking forward to seeing him, you know?"

"Of course, I know, but you were going to work all weekend anyway, weren’t you?" Lip says and tries to tell himself that he's got no reason to feel as shitty about this as he does. "And we’ll be home before you know it.”

“What about Ian?” Fiona asks, changing the subject abruptly, and he isn’t entirely sure whether she believes his story or simply has decided that she doesn’t really want to know – he does know that she needs to be reassured that Ian is okay, and that's something he can't blame her for. 

“He called Sean and told him that he needs the night off,” Lip says, and that at least is the truth, even if he skips the part where Sean wasn't particularly thrilled at the prospect of having to find a replacement on that short of notice. “And he’s got his medication with him,” he adds, and gives Ian an apologetic shrug. His brother shrugs back across the flames, then goes back to poking a burning log with a stick, making sparks stir up like fireflies in the dark of the night. 

“Be careful,” Fiona finally sighs, resigned but not without warmth, “I love you,” and Lip manages a distracted promise before he ends the call. He sighs, downs the last of his beer, and scoots closer to the flames, mesmerized by the colorful heat. 

It's a beautiful fire, but it took them an embarrassingly long time to get it going. They know all there is to know about starting a fire in a metal trash can with a bottle of lighter fluid and a box of matches; they are experts, at least in theory, at setting an abandoned car on fire; but a camp fire made from actual tree parts in the Anderson Falls Nature Preserve, with nothing but crunched-up fast-food bags and a half-empty lighter to get them started – that's a skill you don't learn growing up in the Gallagher household. 

To his left, Carl makes a satisfied noise as he finally manages to impale one of the heavy cheese sandwiches Meghan sent them on the road with on a stick that he proceeds to hold carefully over the fire.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Lip asks, and Carl grins proudly, shadows painting shifting patterns on his face. 

"Grilled cheese sandwich," he proclaims and twists the stick to expose the other side of the bread to the heat. Lip can see the edges of the bread already changing color slowly, and Carl withdraws the stick from the fire and pokes the toast with his index finger. With a satisfied smile, he breaks off an edge and offers it to Lip, then does the same for Ian. 

The bread is hot and greasy against Lip’s fingertips, the melted cheese spilling out over the ragged edges in a thick, slow drip. It doesn’t taste like the grilled cheese he remembers V making for them sometimes when he was younger, when they’d come home from school to an empty house and Kev would wave at them from their front porch to invite them in for iced tea and snacks. This one is sticky from the mayonnaise Meghan used underneath the cheese, with an aftertaste of smoke and soot, and Lip savors the unfamiliar combination as he chews slowly. 

“This is pretty good,” Ian says, and Lip grunts in assent. Carl smiles around a bite of his sandwich as if they had just awarded him the Nobel Prize. 

“No big deal,” he says, as if he needs to remind himself not to be too overtly excited at the praise. “If you can grill marshmallows over the fire, you can grill cheese too, right?”

“When have you ever grilled marshmallows?” Lip asks, brows raised, and Carl shrugs. “Remember when Dad got me enrolled at cancer kid camp?” he asks. “They made us do all kinds of outdoorsy shit.”

Ian snorts, and Lip shakes his head, determined not to let the familiar cold rage he feels for his father overwhelm him for once, not to let it spoil the mood. 

“I still cannot believe Frank did that,” he says, and realizes that he hasn't quite managed to keep all the anger out of his voice. “I can’t believe that asshole actually made you think you were dying.”

“Oh, I have no problems believing it,” Ian says bitterly, pushing glowing branches around in a pattern that doesn't make sense to anyone but him. 

Carl crumbles the empty deli wrap paper into a ball and tosses it into the fire, intently watching it being devoured by the flames. 

“It wasn’t that bad,” he says lightly, and Lip once again marvels at his brother’s ability to simply forgive so many of their parents' major failings. “He did get me into camp,” Carl says. “I mean, it was kind of boring, but we got one of the camp counselors to show us her boobs. And I even made a new friend –“ He pauses, the corners of his mouth turning downwards. “Although he was pretty sick, so I guess he’s probably dead by now.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ian mutters and reaches for Carl’s abandoned grilled-cheese-stick, as if he desperately needs something to hold onto. Lip can relate. 

“And you don’t care that he made you think you had cancer?” Lip asks incredulously, and Carl pulls a face.

“Maybe,” he says doubtfully. “Kind of. It did help me get my priorities straight, so I guess at least it made me grow as a person or some shit.”

“Yeah?” Ian asks. “So what were your priorities? What would you have done if you’d really had to die?”

There is a fascinated curiosity in his voice that makes something uncomfortable twist in Lip’s guts, but Carl seems unconcerned, merely shooting him a lopsided grin. 

“What do you think? I was a kid,” he says, making it sound as if it had been decades ago. “It wasn't anything big. And I managed to get most of it covered, you know? Got to see the tits of a girl I’m not related to. Got to see a proper lake. Got to tell all of you that I love you. Back then, that seemed as good a way to go out as any.” He shrugs. “How about you?” he asks, “what would you do if you knew you were going to die?”

Ian swallows around the last bite of his grilled cheese, then leans back on his hands, looking up at the starry night sky. 

“I don’t know,” he says slowly, “find someone to fuck all night?” 

Carl wrinkles his nose, and Ian shakes his head with a wry grin. “No, wait,” he says, "I'm being serious now. Okay, so things to do before I die," he announces and actually starts ticking off points on his fingers. "Go for a run with Fiona. Set up the pool in the backyard and splash around with you and Debbie for a while. Tuck in Liam one last time. Smoke a joint with Lip. Call Mandy. Make things right with Mickey. Kill Terry Milkovich.”

Lip draws in a sharp breath at the last bit, because his brother sounds way too serious about this; but Ian just laughs quietly and lets himself fall back to the ground. 

“How about you, Lip?” Ian asks lazily, and Lip wants to tell him to fuck off with his stupid games, but something lodges in his throat that keeps the words from falling out. 

He pats down his jacket in search of his cigarettes, and sticks a twig into the flames, waits for it to catch fire before he presses the glowing end against his Marlboro. With the first inhale, the lump in his throat begins to dissolve. He coughs, then chuckles, even though he doesn’t really feel much like laughing. 

“Steal a fancy car and rob a bank,” he says, and doesn't take his eyes off the fire. “Make sure to leave the money somewhere safe, where only you could find it, then drive the car off the High Bridge.” 

He mirrors Ian's position, lying down on his back in the grass. It’s weird how easy it is to imagine it: To get lost in the technicalities – shift plans and face masks and escape routes –, to imagine the rush of adrenaline, the fear, and the final relief when the car breaks through the side barrier of the bridge, a moment of flight, the lurch when gravity takes hold of the car, and the feeling of sinking. All in all, not the worst way to go. 

He closes his eyes, and the next thing he knows, he jerks awake to Ian’s face looming over him, his brother's hand tight and warm against his shoulder. “Wake up, Lip,” Ian hisses urgently. “Come on, there’s park rangers driving up the path, we need to get out of here, like, an hour ago.” 

Lip stumbles to his feet and almost overbalances, disoriented by the bright light of the morning sun. He blinks. The fire they set up last night is only a pile of smoking ashes – Ian or Carl must have remembered to extinguish the flames before falling asleep, and thank god for that, because the last thing they need is getting arrested for causing a forest fire, and the last thing he remembers from yesterday night is the image of a car slowly disappearing underneath the surface of the Calumet River. 

He shakes his head sluggishly and squints at his brother. There’s a twig stuck in Ian’s tousled hair and a pattern of red creases marking the pale skin of his bare arm – a souvenir of the ground he must have slept on. He's got a smear of soot on his cheek, and his eyes still have that slightly unfocused look he always wears until he’s had his first cup of coffee. 

Lip tears his gaze away from his brother and looks around for the traces of their wilderness adventure. He feels a stab of guilt when he imagines what Amanda would say if she knew that he's about to be involved in a case of serious littering in a nature preserve. For a moment, he considers picking up the empty beer bottles, at least – they could even cash in the deposit, win-win. 

But Ian is tugging on his arm, Carl is climbing into the back seat of the car, and he can hear the engine of a truck approaching quickly from behind the bend in the forest road; so instead he sends a silent and only slightly dishonest apology to Amanda, wherever she is, as he jumps into the driver’s seat and barely waits for Ian to close the passenger door before he pulls away, tires screeching. 

 

**MANDY (Saturday, June 27, 4pm)**

"That was decent work today," Ross says, turning back over his shoulder so that they can hear him over the noise of the tractor engine. "I sure didn't expect you to get all the cherries done today. Take the rest of the weekend off, and Monday you can get started on the currant bushes."

Mickey throws him a sloppy salute, as seriously as Mickey could ever take this kind of gesture. His fingertips are black with cherry juice, his tan already far darker than it's ever been even during the hottest Chicago summer, except for the pink patches on his nose where the skin is peeling off. He had claimed sun screen was for girls and ended up dearly paying for it. 

And yet, he looks relaxed, more at ease than she can remember ever seeing him before. She thinks, if she looked in the mirror, she'd probably see the same expression reflected back at her. It's funny how these things go: Only months ago, there they were, two city creatures who'd barely left Chicago in their lifetime – she doesn’t even recall if she'd ever really crossed state lines before Lip took her to Michigan in his ice cream truck to find her half-sister Molly. 

But then, Mandy had run away from the memories of Lip's hands on her skin, and from the guilt-ridden, vicious envy she felt while watching her brother and Ian play house like one of the rich gay couples who'd started buying up property in the neighborhood. And Mickey had run away from Sammi's gun and Terry's fists and the ghost of the person Ian used to be, and then they had run away together again when Kenyatta came back for her eventually, all built-up rage and hate in his eyes. Somehow, the city had chewed them up and spit them out, right in the middle of Bumfuck, Kentucky, and here they are, picking cherries and planting potatoes and slaughtering chicken in exchange for two cots in an abandoned trailer on a piece of land next to a pond, and a share of whatever they harvest this week or that. 

Ross and his family pray before dinner, and they go to service every Sunday morning at the Lutheran church one village over. But they never mention Mickey's tattoos or Mandy's piercings, and they don't ask questions that would only be answered with lies, and when the summer is over, Ross will lock up the trailer for the winter, Mandy and Mickey will move on, and that will be that. 

Mandy leans her head back and closes her eyes against the sun, absent-mindedly scratching a mosquito bite on her left arm. She senses the tractor taking a right turn, driving down the gravelly service road that leads down to the lot at the pond, and starts to think about what they have at home in terms of dinner-appropriate food. Turns out cooking is complicated when the food doesn’t come out of a can. 

Lost in thoughts about new potatoes and pork sausage, it takes her a moment to realize that Ross is saying something, and she opens her eyes. 

"Looks like you have visitors," Ross says and points in the direction of their trailer. 

Mandy squints against the light of the afternoon sun. Sure enough, there is a car parked at the side of the road, an expensive car, and Mandy is fairly certain that they don’t know anyone with a fancy car like this. She shares a look with Mickey. He shrugs, like he couldn't care less, but she can see the familiar tension creeping back into his shoulders. He starts cracking his knuckles, and she is pretty sure he doesn't even realize he's doing it. 

Ross comes to a halt at the crossroad, not bothering to switch off the engine, but he gives them a look that projects hesitance. "You need me to wait?" he asks, but Mickey waves him off, and Mandy shakes her head, awkwardly trying for a smile. 

If whoever is here to see them has anything to do with their father, it's better that Ross isn't around for the conversation. It's true that you can't very well go cherry-picking with a handgun stuffed into the waistband of your pants, and she's fairly certain that the last time Mickey got into a fight was back in Indiana, when he punched the asshole who’d hit on her at the bar down the street. But she knows for a fact that Mickey still carries his brass knuckles in the back pocket of his jeans everywhere he goes, and they've spent the last few weeks lugging heavy crates around, so it's not like they are out of shape. 

Ross looks doubtful, but he doesn't disagree. 

"Don't forget your cherries," he simply says, and makes sure Mickey grabs a box before they climb off the trolley. "See you Monday, kids."

He drives off, tuckering home to his cozy house, a hot dinner and a bunch of hyper-energized rug rats, and they nod and wave and watch him until he's safely disappeared around the bend in the road. 

When they turn around, there is someone leaning against the side of the car. Mandy can see the guy shifting from one leg to the other, can see someone else walking up to him, around the hood of the vehicle. There's something familiar about the strangers, she thinks, although she cannot quite put her finger on it. 

"You think it's Dad?" she asks, hesitantly, because she really thought they'd run far enough to get away from him, because she really thought they could wait it out at least until he went back to prison, inevitably, sooner or later, and maybe even finally for good. 

Mickey snorts. "You really think fucking Terry knows anyone with a hot-ass car like that?"

"No," she agrees, and then takes a double take because one of the men is moving just so, and holy fuck, she knows that walk. 

"What the hell," she breathes. Next to her, Mickey lets out a strangled noise. 

"Am I finally losing my mind, or can you see them too?"

"Oh, I can see them just fine," she says. "But, I mean, seriously, what the fuck."

Despite herself, part of her is still wondering if she’s dreaming as they walk up to the car. There is something surreal about seeing these guys, of all people, in Kentucky, of all places, just after she had pretty much convinced herself that there was a good chance she would never see them again. 

They are nervous, too, and it hits her that she knows them well enough to tell: Lip in his demonstratively casual stance like he’s preparing for an attack, legs wide, hands in his pockets; Ian with his arms crossed over his chest defensively, eyes deliberately blank; Carl shifting from one leg to the other awkwardly, torn between flight and fight – he's grown a lot since she's last seen him, not a kid anymore, and not quite yet a man. 

It’s their nervousness, in the end, that convinces her that this is real. She isn’t quite sure how she feels about it. She thinks she should be angry: at Lip, for just not being able to leave well enough alone; at Ian, for breaking her brother’s heart; at Carl, for not stopping his brothers from coming down here – of course, knowing him, she wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it was actually his idea. 

And still, and still. After the miserable time in Indiana, after convincing herself that it was for the best, that Kenyatta was as good as it would get for her, after considering the possibility that Chicago was not her home anymore, seeing them here makes her go weak with relief in a way she cannot quite explain, as if something has slotted into place after hanging loose and disconnected for a little while too long. She throws a quick glance at Mickey, but for all she knows her brother better than almost anyone, she cannot tell what he’s thinking right now. 

"What the hell are you doing here?" he asks, carefully setting down the crate of cherries. Phrased any differently, it could be a threat, but it comes out far more wary than angry. He does sound surprisingly unsurprised, but then, Mandy figures that he probably spent enough time around the Gallaghers to be prepared for all kinds of unexpected insanity. 

"We brought your mail," Lip smirks, when it becomes clear that Ian has no intention to answer, and Mandy half-expects Mickey to explode at him, half-expects punches and bloody teeth. But she must have missed more than she thought in the time after she left Chicago, because Mickey just quirks an eyebrow at him and crosses his arms over his chest. 

"Oh yeah?" he drawls, "all that hard work to get into college, and you end up with a job at USPS?"

"Are you complaining?" Lip snorts, and Mickey shrugs. 

"Just saying. And what's with the car, man? I'm pretty sure USPS does not pay that kind of money."

Carl grins broadly. "Lip stole it from his hot professor," he says. 

"Really," Mickey says slowly. "Didn't think you had it in you, _Phillip_."

"I didn't steal it," Lip says exasperatedly, but he's grinning too. "I only borrowed it."

"Tomato tomahto," Mickey smirks. "Did you break the kid out of prison, or did you just borrow him, too?"

"I'm not a kid," Carl protests. "And I didn't break out, I got released."

"Uh-uh," Mickey says, and his voice turns more serious now. "Good for you, man, but what the fuck are you doing here? I mean, my memory's a bit rusty, because it's kind of been a while, but I seem to remember there being something about not leaving the state while you're on parole. Or does that kind of rule not apply to Gallaghers?"

Carl grins and opens his mouth, no doubt for another smart-ass comment, but he is interrupted abruptly when Ian takes a step forward and holds out a hand. 

"Can I talk to you?" he asks Mickey, and while he isn't quite pleading, it sure sounds like he would if Mickey wanted him to. Mickey frowns, and for a moment, Mandy is worried that he'll actually say no, that he'll walk away and things are never going to get fixed. But then Mickey merely shrugs a little, as if to say, hell, why not, and gestures vaguely into the direction of the pond. Without another word, they head down to the water, next to each other but with a foot distance between them, a distance both physical and emotional that Mandy doesn't remember being there before. 

She watches how Ian hesitantly moves closer, how he starts talking, and she has to glance away – despite the space between them, it seems too intimate a moment for her to witness. Trying to find something else for her eyes to rest on, she catches Lip's gaze almost accidentally, and he shrugs helplessly, his smile wry. 

"I suppose we should talk, too?" he says, makes it sound like a question, as if to give her the chance to back out. She considers it, but for a second at most, because despite everything and despite herself, she is still so very glad to see him. 

"In that case, you can help me get dinner started," she says dryly and jerks her head toward the direction of the trailer. "Since you look like you're expecting to be fed."

 

**MICKEY (Saturday, June 27, 5pm)**

"So this is what you do now?" Ian asks, as they come to a stop at the edge of the water, out of earshot, if not out of sight. "Farmhands in Kentucky?" 

Mickey is fairly certain that he doesn't mean to make it sound mocking, reproachful, and yet, the skeptical disbelief is insulting too, in its own way. 

"For the summer, yeah," he says, as casual as he can manage, determined not to take the bait. "Why not?"

Ian shrugs, the tension in his shoulders betraying his relaxed stance. "I don't know," he admits awkwardly, not quite meeting Mickey's eyes. "It's just that I didn't think this was something you'd be into."

"Well," Mickey says, and he doesn't mean to sound quite as defensive as he does. "Maybe there's still a couple things you don't know about me."

Ian winces. "Fair enough," he says, and then doesn't seem to know how to continue. 

"You seem better," Mickey finally says, because he'd like to hear what Ian is here for at least, and he's not going to find out if he antagonizes him within the first five minutes. Also, it's the truth, and beyond all the bitterness and resentment Mickey has been carrying around with him these past few months, Mickey is honest enough with himself to admit that it is a relief to know that Ian made it, that he didn't end up locked up in a facility with white bandages around his wrists, or in the exam room of a free clinic with a sympathetic nurse and a positive HIV test in his file. 

He suspects that he could have found out from Mandy too, who probably stayed in touch with Ian at least to some degree, but when he showed up on her doorstep in Columbus, weeks after Ian had kicked him out of his life, a month or so after that asshole Kenyatta had dumped Mandy for a Hooters waitress with less attitude and more tits, they had gotten fucking wasted on cheap vodka and then agreed never to bring up the topic of their miserable love lives again. 

"I am better," Ian says, and even the fact that he answers the question so easily shows Mickey how much his state of mind has improved. 

"I mean, it took me months of medication and self-help group meetings to get there, and sometimes Fiona and Lip and Kev dragged me kicking and screaming, but yeah, I think I'm in an okay place now."

"I'm glad," Mickey says, and means it. If he looks at the water bugs rippling the surface of the pond instead of Ian's face, well, no one's ever claimed he was a saint. 

He can feel Ian staring at him from the side. "Thanks," he says slowly, and then: "I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of."

Mickey snorts. "Who hasn't?" 

He bends down to pick up a pebble or two from the ground, straightens and pulls his arm back to toss them into the water. He likes how a couple of fish always come close to the surface to investigate, only to disappear again when they realize that they've been tricked once more and there is not actually any food. 

Ian frowns and shakes his head. "No, come on, you know what I mean," he says. "The things I did before I went back on medication. You know. When I kidnapped Yev. When I swung a baseball bat at Debbie. When I broke up with you."

Mickey laughs, if only because it's better than the alternative. "Breaking up with me is hardly in the same category as kidnapping and almost beating up your sister."

It's not self-deprecation that makes him say it, it really isn't. Yes, Ian breaking up with him felt very much like having his heart ripped out of his chest and every other cliché in the book; but he still remembers Svetlana's hysterical voice and Yevgeny, quiet and wide-eyed, in the arms of a police officer in Terre Haute; remembers the fear in Debbie and Carl's faces when they saw Ian lying in that bed, motionless and withdrawn. Mickey was broken long before he first pressed Ian down onto the ratty mattress in his cluttered room, but the children, Jesus fucking Christ. 

Ian is shaking his head stubbornly. "It's really not that different," he says seriously. "Not for me. It's just – I kept hurting the people I love, because everything in my head was warped and jumbled. One moment, the world was black and grey, the next, everything was colors exploding over each other and things couldn't move fast enough. No one in my family gets it, because it's so hard to explain what it's like. But the worst thing is now that I'm feeling alright, sometimes I think I don't even understand it myself anymore." He pauses, bites his lip. "To be honest, I can't even remember why I thought breaking up with you was a good idea."

"What are you saying," Mickey asks slowly, and there is some coldness creeping into his voice, he can't help it. "That dumping me was a mistake?"

Ian grimaces, but to his credit, he doesn't look away. "Pretty much, yeah."

Mickey closes his eyes and turns away. "Ian," he starts and has to break off, too many emotions ambushing him at once. He reopens his eyes, makes himself look at Ian – Ian, who's cut his hair short again, who's wearing some dorky-ass hipster t-shirt with the print of a robot fighting a dinosaur that Mickey wouldn't be caught dead in, who's covered in so many seasonal freckles that they barely leave room for the translucent pale skin underneath. 

"Look," he says, and it's almost physically painful to force out the words. "I'm not saying that I haven't – that I don't miss you or that I didn't wish, sometimes, that you'd come back. And I know you were in a fucking awful place, and I didn't know what I was doing most of the time, and maybe –" shit, it hurts to say it – "maybe breaking up was the right thing to do. Maybe it would have killed both of us if we'd tried to stick it out. But – this thing you did, where you ran away and came back and left me. I'm not letting you do that again."

"I know," Ian says, raising his hands, and fuck, now there are tears in his eyes. "I know, believe me, Mickey. I'm not expecting you to come running back to me, like nothing ever happened. I don't expect us to just pick up where we left off."

"So what do you expect then?" Mickey asks gruffly, but his voice is softening already, defenseless against the sight of Ian's tears and regret. 

Ian wipes his face with a freckled forearm, squats down at the edge of the pond and drags his fingers through the water experimentally, as if he's never seen a pond before. Maybe he hasn’t, and somehow the thought makes Mickey inexplicably sad. 

"I don't know," Ian says helplessly, and keeps drawing ripples into the shallow water. Two pond skaters in the vicinity hurry out of the way. "I don't know how to fix this, or where to go from here. I just –" he straightens, wipes his wet fingers on his jeans. "I just know that when I got better, a lot of the things that made me miserable suddenly seemed a little bit less bad. But missing you; regretting that I made you leave – that feeling never went away. And if there's anything I can do to make it better … to have you back in my life … then that's what I'm going to do."

Mickey swallows, drags a hand through his hair, and stares across the pond: he thinks if he looks Ian in the eyes now, he'll want to pull him close and never let go, and that's something he isn't prepared yet to do. 

"Well, you are here now," he says finally, and only then trusts himself to look at Ian again. Ian gives him a hesitant smile, sweet and almost shy, and out of instinct, Mickey allows himself to smile back. 

Ian following him all the way to Kentucky, Ian being here – Mickey doesn't quite know what it means yet, but it is _something_ , he knows that much. 

If nothing else, it's a start. 

 

**CARL (Saturday, June 27, 6pm)**

He sits down in the shade underneath a tree, back against the trunk, and kicks off his flip-flops before he takes out his cell. He doesn't know why he suddenly feels like calling someone. He doesn't even know whom to call. But this is the first time he's had his phone back since they took away his belongings when they locked him up, and one of the COs must have felt generous enough to charge the battery before returning it, because after being turned off for so long, by all means the phone should be dead. 

For a moment, his thumb hovers over Fiona's name before he clicks her away and scrolls up his (ridiculously short) contact list. Debbie picks up after the second ring. 

"Carl?" she says, and there are too many emotions in her voice, as if she's hovering between thrilled and panicked. "Are you okay? When are you coming home?"

"I'm okay," he says, trying to sound grown-up and reassuring. "We'll be back in a day or two."

She is quiet for a while. "You are not really staying with Lip's friend, are you?" she asks, and Carl pulls a face. Debbie has always been a bit too perceptive for his tastes. 

"No," he replies truthfully, because there is no point in lying to her when she's already figured it out. 

"Carl …" she says, and he interrupts her before she can start to lecture. 

"We're fine," he says firmly. "Everything's great. Nothing's going to happen, I swear. Just don't tell Fiona, okay?"

"I won't," she answers immediately, as if she's annoyed he'd even ask. But when she continues – "So where are you? Do I even want to know?" – she suddenly sounds a lot like Fiona would, and he is not sure how much he wants to tell her. 

When he refuses to answer her questions, they quickly run out of things to say. It doesn't bother him, because they've always been like that. They used to spend a lot of time together, and always knew each other's secrets, but somehow they never really had much to say to each other, back then or now.

She does tell him that she missed him before he ends the call, and he forces himself to say it back, knowing how much it'll mean to her. He sees Lip heading in his direction and drops the phone into the grass as he watches his brother approach across the lawn. 

"Hey," Lip says when he's standing over him, his shadow covering Carl for a moment; then he sits down next to him on the ground, shoulder to shoulder. He takes a cigarette from behind his ear, lights it between cupped hands, and inhales once before offering the cigarette to Carl. 

Carl reaches out to accept it and tries not to look surprised. Since they've picked him up from juvie, Lip's been passing beer bottles and cigarettes back and forth without blinking twice, like Carl remembers him doing with Ian all the time, in that absent-minded, automatic way, as if he doesn't even realize what he's doing. Maybe it's a sign that Lip doesn't see him as his little brother anymore. Maybe it's a sign that Lip's taking him seriously. There was a time, not that long ago, when Carl would have given his right arm for this kind of respect, but now that it's happening, he realizes that he doesn't quite know what to do with it. 

"Did you and Mandy make up?" Carl asks, careful to exhale the smoke before he speaks so he doesn't start coughing like an amateur. 

Lip makes a so-so gesture with his hand, shrugging his shoulders to amplify the effect. 

"Are you getting back together?" Carl rephrases, and Lip rubs his face. 

"I don't know," he says. "Not sure that's going to happen. Too much water under the bridge. And too many burnt bridges. But that also wasn't really the point of coming here."

"So what was the point?" Carl asks, honestly curious. Lip sighs and steals the cigarette back. 

"Just – I don't know. Making sure she is okay. Trying to make amends. Trying to see if there's a way we can be friends again." He flicks the ash off the tip of his Marlboro and shrugs. "Sex you can get anywhere, you know? Friends are a bit more difficult to find."

For a moment, he stares into nothing, then he shakes himself and looks at Carl. "How you holding up? You enjoying the sweet taste of freedom?"

Carl makes a face and scratches at one of his mosquito bites. "The countryside is kinda starting to creep me out."

Lip laughs. "Yeah," he says ruefully. "Guess we are city rats at heart." He gestures toward the meadow stretching out in front of them. "It's beautiful, no question, but it doesn't really make me feel like I belong."

Carl squints up at Lip from the side. The sunshine's catching in his curls, and he's got the top buttons of his shirt undone, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Lip doesn't actually look that out of place. But then, he rarely does. 

"I felt like I belonged in prison," he says. He hadn't really intended to say that out loud, but now that it's done, it actually feels like relief. 

Lip frowns. "You mean, you thought you deserved it?" he asks, sounding puzzled and a little bit concerned.

"No," Carl shakes his head, struggling to find the right words. "I felt like I belonged."

Lip draws his eyebrows together. "Why?" he asks. "I thought the whole point of prison was to make you feel as little at home as possible."

Carl shrugs. "Yes, but. I finally didn't feel like I was the only fucked-up person in the room."

Lip laughs, incredulously. "When did you ever feel like you were the only fucked-up person in the Gallagher household?"

Carl grins a little at that, because, sure, Lip's got a point. But. "No, not that kind of fucked up," he states. He holds out his hand for the cigarette. It's almost burned down, just long enough for him to hold it without burning his fingers when he guides it to his mouth. He thinks he might want it to burn him, and wonders what Lip would say if he knew. 

"Do you think there's something really wrong with me?"

Lip tilts his head thoughtfully, and maybe Carl should be offended, but mostly he's grateful that his brother is actually considering the question, not simply laughing at him and waving it off. 

"What exactly are we talking about?" Lip asks carefully, and Carl thinks he's probably got a list of potential meanings of _wrong_ in his head he's slowly working through: alcoholism, mental illness, sex addiction, criminal behavior, brain damage, liver failure, STDs. Hah. The list goes on. 

"I like thinking about hurting people sometimes," he admits, and focuses on stubbing out the cigarette against the root of the tree so that he doesn't have to look at Lip. 

His brother is quiet for a long time. "Yeah, me too," he finally says, so matter-of-factly that Carl has to look up at him after all. 

"What do you do about it?" he asks, and Lip shrugs.

"Break things instead, mostly," he says. "If that's not enough, start a fight with someone bigger than me. You know – means I can hurt someone, but they can hurt me right back. Seems – I don't know, seems fair somehow, you know? Jesus Christ, that's fucked up." He laughs, a little shakily, and Carl smiles hesitantly and nods as if he understands. 

Truth is, though, Carl doesn't think Lip's quite the same as him. Somehow, he doesn't think that Lip has ever jerked off to the idea of someone's public execution, even if Marie Antoinette has been dead for about a thousand years. He doesn't think Lip used to experiment on animals either, doesn't think he knows the same kind of cold pleasure that Carl can get from mutilating a Barbie doll.

Lip just gets so angry, has all that bottled-up rage in him with no place to go. Carl thinks that when he says he wants to hurt people, what he's really saying is that he wants to hurt Monica and Frank. They all get angry with their parents, have all wished them dead, at one point or another, but Lip? Lip hates them with the very core of his being. Hates them for what they've done to him, for what they've done to his siblings, for the kind of family they forced them to be. And Carl understands why, he really does, it's just that he's never quite mustered the kind of emotional energy it would take to resent them that much. 

And yet, he likes the idea that Lip thinks they have this in common. So he stays quiet and keeps his opinion to himself.

"I think the trick is to control it," Lip finally says, "not let it control you. Keep it in your head and find an outlet that's not doing any harm, you know?" He looks at Carl seriously as if he's waiting for him to react, to answer, so Carl nods along, even though he isn't quite sure he really understands what his brother means. 

"You ever want to hurt me?" Lip suddenly asks, sounding curious, as if he actually wants to know. So Carl thinks about it, the urges he's had, the people he's wanted to hurt. 

"No," he finally says truthfully, and somehow that is a comforting thought. 

"Yeah," Lips says, as if he hadn't expected anything else. "Me neither." 

Then he gets up and ruffles Carl's hair, like he used to when Carl was little, and Carl doesn't even bother to shake him off. He thinks it means that even if Lip takes him seriously now, he'll always be his kid brother, and Carl thinks he's okay with that. 

 

**IAN (Saturday, June 27, 7pm)**

After the conversation with Mickey, Ian feels raw and fragile in ways he hasn’t maybe since the time they first sent him to psych eval. He can only imagine how Mickey must feel. He used to be able to look at him and just know, but somehow, in the time they spent apart, Mickey has changed – or maybe it's him who's different – and he realizes he’s not sure anymore what’s going on in Mickey’s head. That truth hurts far more than it should. 

And yet, for all the prodding at old scabs, for all the dirty laundry and uncomfortable truths, he also realizes, with a sense of awe, that he is not about to fall apart. That’s the difference between then and now, he thinks, that’s the reason he keeps going back to his stupid support group and the endless check-ups at the clinic, why he keeps swallowing his pills under Fiona’s watchful eyes: this feeling of knowing that no matter how bad it gets, he will come out on the other side alive, even if he's got some dents and bruises to show for it. 

By the time they get back to the trailer, hours later, Mandy has set up a rusty gas grill in a spot next to the door and is wrapping potatoes in aluminum foil, while Carl and Lip are busy shucking a pile of corn, squeezed next to each other on a rickety lawn chair. Together, they make a strangely peaceful image, content and relaxed, and Ian figures that whatever shit Mandy and Lip had to work through, it seems like they've resolved what they needed to, enough to be comfortable around each other, at least. 

Mandy looks up from her work and throws them a smile, quick and genuine. Ian finds himself smiling back without thinking. Just like Mickey, Mandy looks good in this environment, not out of place like he would have thought. She's moving less carefully than he remembers her from before, doesn't keep her head down in the way that always made her look like she was bracing herself for a blow. All this time, he'd thought that her leaving Chicago meant she was hiding from things, that she was running away, and maybe there's some truth to that – but he's starting to realize that it's only half the story. 

"Gallagher," she shouts, waving him over. "Come help me with the potatoes." He goes obediently and picks up the roll of aluminum foil. 

"We have any booze left, woman?" Mickey asks, and Mandy doesn't let the potato in her hand keep her from flipping him off. 

"If you didn't drink so much, you wouldn't have to ask, asshole," she says and pushes her unruly hair out of her face. "But there should be some of the tequila left, and a bottle of that horrible blueberry wine the church ladies brought last week as punishment for our sins."

"We still got some beer in the car," Lip offers. "Probably piss-warm though at this point. You got a cooler or something?"

"We got a fridge, man," Mickey says, indignantly. "This ain't the final border of civilization or some shit. Is the car locked?" 

"Nope," Lip says and goes back to peeling the husk off a corncob with great diligence. Mickey wanders off towards the car, and Ian follows him with his eyes, watches him inspect the vehicle closely. Judging from the reverent way he touches the hood in passing before popping the trunk, he's appropriately impressed. 

"You okay?" Mandy asks quietly, and Ian realizes that she has caught him staring at her brother. 

"Yeah, fine," he nods, and bumps his hip gently against hers. "You?" he asks, and Mandy grins up at him from underneath her bangs. 

"Good," she says, "except for these three homeless guys squatting on our land and eating all our food." 

Ian raises a brow. "Your land?" he teases. "Please. You don't have enough money to buy the space it takes to set up a camping table."

"Maybe I won the lottery," she shrugs airily. "Maybe we became porn stars while you weren't looking and made a shitton of dough."

Ian chokes on his laughter. "Porn stars? You and Mickey?" he chuckles. "Seriously?"

Somehow, she manages to keep a straight face. "Yup," she says. "You know, the whole sibling incest thing? People pay a lot of money for that. You and Lip should probably look into it."

"Mandy!" he protests, actually feeling a bit scandalized, and he honestly didn't think that was possible anymore: he _has_ shot porn before, after all. He swats at her with the aluminum foil and isn't too surprised when she manages to duck away. She's always been quick on her feet.

"Aww, you're blushing," she laughs, stretching up to pinch his cheek, and Ian catches her around the waist, hugging her close. She comes easily, tucks her head underneath his chin. Ian buries his nose in her hair and realizes with a jolt that over all the agonizing and longing for Mickey, he almost forgot that he's missed her, too. 

He only lets go when Mickey returns from the trailer, cigarette in his mouth, a stack of Solo cups in one hand and a tequila bottle full of bright purple liquid in the other. 

"Alright, ladies," he announces, and shifts the bottle underneath his arm so he can take the cigarette out from between his lips. "That shitty beer you brought is in the fridge, so we'll have to get started on the real stuff." 

He throws the plastic cups at Carl, who catches them clumsily, and shakes the bottle over his head. 

"Mickey, what did you do?" Mandy says, horrified, and Mickey grins. 

"Mixed the tequila with the blueberry wine."

"Jesus," Lip mutters, and Mickey raises his brows. 

"Hey, don't knock it till you've tried it," he smirks. "Cups," he orders, and fills the two cups that Carl obediently holds out to him halfway. 

"Bottoms up," Mickey says, and starts pouring some blueberry tequila for Mandy and himself. Ian watches Lip's brows go all the way up after the first hesitant sip, but he does keep drinking, almost as if he can't quite help himself. Next to him, Carl is chugging the content of his cup as if it's orange juice, and Ian thinks he should probably keep an eye on him. 

"Hey," Mickey says, standing close, and lifts the bottle at Ian questioningly. "No hard liquor for you while you're on your meds, right?"

Ian eyes the mixture suspiciously. "Better not," he agrees, and then: "Maybe a sip, though. Just so I know what you are trying to poison my brothers with."

"Dude," Mickey says indignantly as he carefully pours about a teaspoon of tequila into a new cup. "Poisoning people is so gay. You better believe that I'd come up with something cooler if need be."

"I have no doubt," Ian says, mock-serious, and then readily gives in to the smile that wants to break free. He feels something warm uncurl in his stomach when Mickey winks and grins back. 

"Cheers," Mickey says and raises his cup, and this is good, this is comfortable, this is them. 

"Cheers," Ian echoes and taps Mickey's Solo cup with his own. 

 

**MICKEY (Sunday, June 28, 8am)**

What the fuck," Mickey grunts and blinks against the bright light of the morning sun. Next to him, Mandy shifts on the lawn chair, her knee bumping into his side. His back creaks as he shifts, and behind his forehead, a stabbing pain announces its existence. Awkwardly, he props himself up on his elbow and blearily looks for the source of the noise that woke him up.

Ian and Lip are down by the pond, pushing and shoving, each one trying to wrestle the other one into the water. They're laughing, loud and wild and insane. Except for their underwear, they're also both completely naked. Mickey blinks, because he thinks it's not outside the realm of possibility that the blueberry wine has made him hallucinate. The image doesn't disappear. 

"Jesus," Mandy says next to him, sitting up and keeping the sun out of her eyes with one hand against her forehead. Her mouth is hanging open somewhat unflatteringly in surprise. 

Behind them, Carl stumbles out of the trailer, wearing only a pair of boxers and his flip-flops, idly sipping from a can of beer. He stands next to them and watches the performance with an air of slight boredom, then he takes in the way Mickey and Mandy stare, and tilts his head. 

"Are you turned on right now?" he asks curiously. 

"Oh my god," Mickey groans, and drags a hand over his face. "You are so fucked in the head, you know that, kid?" He steadfastly ignores the fact that yes, he might indeed be a tiny bit turned on, despite the hangover headache creeping up on him. 

Carl grins and shrugs, as if he's been called far worse. Then he drops his beer and his boxers, almost in one single motion, and races towards the pond with a blood-curdling scream. He throws himself into the water, splashing and splattering, and Ian and Lip abandon their wrestling match in favor of following him into the pond, whooping and laughing. 

Mickey doesn't know where to look anymore. He tries to focus on Mandy, but she's just sitting there with a look on her face that is half shocked glee, half wistful longing. When she catches him looking, she shrugs and smirks.

"You coming?" she asks, and gets to her feet. Mickey follows her with his eyes as she walks toward the lake, shedding clothes as she goes, her t-shirt, her shorts, her bra. As she reaches the pond, she steps out of her panties without breaking stride, the water lapping at her feet, and keeps walking, until she's immersed up to her chest. 

Carl and Ian immediately start splashing water at her, cheering and whistling. Lip's face lights up in a wide grin at the sight of her, and she laughs and throws herself at him, trying to push him underwater. He retaliates by dragging her down with him, and they reemerge together, clinging to each other and still laughing. 

Mickey blinks and looks away. 

"Hey Mickey," Ian yells, and he sounds as challenging as he sounds hopeful. "What's taking you so long?"

Mickey stares at him and tries to come up with an answer. Ian's walking towards him, the water just barely reaching his belly-button. When he waves at Mickey, the muscles shift in his upper arms, and the sun catches in the drops of water clinging to his body, making him look sparkly like that vampire dude his sister used to have a crush on she thought he knew nothing about. 

"Come on, Mickey," Ian says softly. "The water is really nice." There is an almost disappointed undertone in his voice, as if he doesn't think he'll be able to convince Mickey to join them, but needs to try nonetheless. 

Mickey thinks about it for a second, then shakes his head at himself. 

"Fuck it," he says, and reaches up to pull off his shirt. 

An hour later, they all end up strewn across the lawn on their bellies, like a bunch of stranded fish, a bit of a morning breeze drying the water on their skin, the sun warm against their backs. He's going to get sunburn again, Mickey knows, but he's too comfortable to bring himself to get up and go look for the sunscreen they've got hidden in the trailer somewhere. 

Mandy has at least deigned to put her panties back on, and Mickey is silently grateful: he really doesn't want to deal with the fact that Carl and Lip are ogling his naked sister just because she's such a freaking exhibitionist.

Next to him, Ian is spread out in the grass like a giant starfish, his wet hair dark against the nape of his neck, his damp boxer briefs clinging to his well-toned butt. His arms are covered in goosebumps, despite the summer heat, and Mickey has a hard time tearing his eyes away. 

"We should head out soon," Ian says lazily, without lifting his head from his arms. "If we are not back by tonight, Fiona is going to kill us."

"Yeah," Lip agrees. He sounds reluctant, but he is also moving slowly into a seated position, dragging his fingers through his wet curls. "Guess I should bring Helene her car back, too."

"Can I drive?" Carl asks, voice demonstratively casual, and Lip raises his eyes at him. 

"Ask me again in four years, buddy," he says. "Or, you know, when you are not on probation anymore. Whichever comes first."

Carl shrugs, but he doesn't appear too upset. "Worth a try," he says and scratches his arm. He is covered in so many mosquito bites, he looks like he's got chicken pox. 

"What about you guys?" Ian asks, and finally raises his head to look at Mickey with careful eyes. 

"What about us?" Mickey asks, although he can imagine where this is going. 

"Are you –" Ian starts, sounding awkward and embarrassed. "Are you coming back with us?"

Mickey meets Mandy's gaze over Ian's shoulder. She widens her eyes at him in a way that's probably supposed to be meaningful, but really doesn't tell him anything at all. He grimaces at her and gets to see her tongue in return. 

"No," he finally says, pausing when his voice cracks a little on the vowel. He clears his throat and starts over. "No, we're sticking around. We still got work around here till September. October even, maybe."

Ian frowns at him. "But after the summer," he says. "Will you be back?" 

Mickey looks him in the eyes, and for a moment desperately wants to say yes, wants to say that he'll be back, that they'll start over, that everything will go back to how it was. Except – he does realize now that _how it was_ wasn't actually that great, most of the time, and Mickey thinks that if they're going to come together again, somehow, somewhere, it can't just be a repeat of their old push-and-pull, when half the days they were as likely to punch each other in the face as kiss. 

"Maybe," he says truthfully, and tries to convey all his thoughts with that one word. "Maybe," he repeats and reaches out to touch Ian's bare shoulder after all, resting there for a moment before gliding down his arm. "I just – there are things – and Dad –"

"Okay," Ian nods, and he doesn't look happy, but he looks like he understands. "Okay," he says, and then, suddenly, gives him a grin, lop-sided and hopeful. 

"Guess I'll just have to come visit again."

Mickey nods and keeps his hand where it is. 

"I guess so."

 

**MANDY (Sunday, June 28, 12pm)**

"You wish you could have gone with them?" Mandy asks, after the car has wobbled up the path towards the service road and disappeared from view. 

She can still feel the ghost of Ian's arms around her when she'd firmly hugged him goodbye, still feels her lips tingling from where she'd roughly pulled Lip's head back by his hair and pressed a messy kiss to his lips, just to see him flail in surprise. Somehow, that kind of thing comes so much easier now that they've agreed to be friends. 

She'd grinned as she watched Mickey do painfully awkward fist bumps with both Carl and Lip, and then had looked away when Ian had wrapped him in a tight embrace that lasted for a very long time. 

"Text me, yeah?" Ian had said quietly, and Mickey had nodded silently and let him go, and that was that. 

"No," Mickey says now, even while his eyes are still trained on the road where the car had taken the corner minutes ago. 

"No?" she prods carefully, glancing at him from the side. 

He shrugs and pulls a squished pack of Pall Malls from his pocket, then turns around and heads back for the trailer as he fumbles two cigarettes out of the pack. He lets her take one of them and flips the other one between his fingers like a throwing knife, back and forth. 

"Not ready to go back to Chicago yet," he says without looking at her. "This – this is good for me, I think. I just – I need to be here right now." 

"Yeah," she nods, because this is something he doesn't need to explain, at least not to her. They've never had a place like this before, a place that felt, if not like home, at least like shelter. Safe. It'll be hard to let that go. 

In passing, she picks the lighter up from the top of the grill and settles in the lawn chair, lights her cigarette, inhales deeply and sighs. She can hear the cicadas making a racket again, and a bird is singing somewhere nearby. The sun is just starting to feel a little bit too hot, and the air is now completely still. 

Mickey sits down on the ground next to her, legs folded awkwardly, his back propped against the edge of the chair. She dangles her hand around and in front of him, lets him light his cigarette on hers before she takes it back and takes another drag. 

"But are you going to text him?" she asks finally and turns her face lazily so that she can stare at the back of his head. The nape of his neck is already turning red from the sun, and she feels the sudden, inexplicable urge to run her fingers over the sensitive skin. 

He is quiet for a long time. "Yeah," he simply says eventually. "Yes." In an unexpected move, he lets his head fall back until it comes to rest against the side of her thigh, a warm, heavy weight on her leg. 

Mandy freezes and carefully looks at him, but his eyes are closed, the hand holding the burning cigarette on the ground by his hip. He looks peaceful and relaxed. 

She tries to remember if her brother has ever initiated physical contact like this, and cannot come up with a single memory. She knows she doesn't want it to end. 

So she says nothing, and breathes very quietly, and tries not to move at all. 

 

**CARL (Sunday, June 28, 2pm)**

They stop to refuel at a gas station in Scottsburg, Indiana, dangerously long after the fuel gauge needle has been tilting towards the E. They count out their money by the cent, and Lip manages to fill the tank for an amount that leaves them with exactly 48 cents to spare. 

"You pay for gas, I'll go get snacks," Carl says and climbs out of the back seat. 

"Just make sure to stay away from the security cams," Ian admonishes quietly, and Carl raises his brows at him. 

"Not my first rodeo, dude," he says reproachfully. 

"Yeah, but you haven't had much practice lately," Ian says, and then puts an unexpected hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly. 

"I know you know what you're doing," he says. "Just be careful, okay?"

"Always," Carl grins and wanders into the store, looking around like he's bored and just killing time, playing the kid who's waiting for his mom to change her tampon in the lady's room. It's a role he'd been perfecting for years before he went to jail, and it's pretty much like riding a bicycle. 

Sure enough, he manages to swipe a couple of soda cans, pretzels and M&Ms before a middle-aged woman even starts to look at him funnily. He distracts her by intently staring at her boobs until she blushes and turns away, and grabs a pack of Twizzlers for good measure on his way out. 

"Got us food," he announces and dumps his booty into the back seat before climbing in himself. 

"Nicely done, buddy," Lip says appreciatively when he comes back from paying for gas, and reaches for the pretzels with a happy noise. Carl's successful raid apparently puts him in a good enough mood that he barely protests when Ian holds out a hand for the car keys, and Carl wonders if Lip would had let him drive, too, if he had asked first.

"Just stick to the speed limit," Lip grumbles at Ian, but seems more than happy to settle down in the passenger seat with one bare foot propped against the dashboard. "Last thing we need is to be pulled over for a traffic violation by the Indiana cops."

"Yessir," Ian grins and puts the key in the ignition, but he carefully checks the rear mirror as he pulls out into traffic. 

Carl idly watches Indiana pass by while he works his way through the Twizzlers, and thinks that for his first weekend out of prison, that wasn't actually so bad. He falls asleep somewhere before Indianapolis and doesn't wake up until they are heading into Chicago, with a crick in his neck and a gooey Twizzler sticking to his cheek. 

He hears Lip give Ian directions that lead them into one of the fancy neighborhoods that Carl's never been to before, streets lined with trees and unbroken fences. Ian takes a left turn, and Lip sets a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. 

"That's the street. We made it," he says, and he actually sounds surprised. "I can't believe it. Carl didn't get arrested for violating probation," he says, lifting his hand from Ian's shoulder to check points off on his fingers. "We didn't freeze to death in the middle of the night, we didn't get stranded without gas somewhere in Indiana, Mickey and Mandy are alive, and they didn't even break out the knives when they saw us coming, and the car is –" 

Carl never gets to hear what Lip has to say about the car, because he is cut off suddenly by a loud noise, and the BMW gets jerked to the side, pressing Carl into his safety belt. Once, before Liam was born, Fiona had taken them to a fair, and Ian had gone with him for a ride on the rollercoaster. Carl had kind of loved it, but he still had puked his guts out the moment they stumbled off the ride. This is a little bit what it felt like back then, only much more painful and way less fun. It's over much more quickly as well – the car skids across the road, spinning on its axis, and Carl gasps when it comes to a standstill, trying to get some air back into his lungs. 

"Fuck," he hears Ian groan. His voice is rough, like the crunching of a boot on broken glass. 

"Ian?" he says, confused at the way his voice shakes. He can see Ian struggle with his seatbelt, watches him twist around in the driver seat to turn toward the back of the car. His face is pale, almost grey. Carl wonders if he knows that there is blood running down his temple. 

"Get out of the car, Carl," he says, and Carl stares at him, uncomprehending. His gaze flickers from Ian to the passenger seat. He catches a glimpse of Lip's curls in the gap between Ian's shoulder and the back of the seat. Lip isn't moving.

"Get out of the car," Ian says again, his voice urgent. 

Carl shakes his head, and doesn't seem to be able to formulate a clear thought. He struggles with the door, but he can't figure out if it's because the door is stuck or because his hands are shaking too hard. When the lock finally gives and the door swings open, he loses his balance and tumbles out of the car, landing on his hands and knees. He takes inventory of his body, his legs, his arms, his head. Everything seems to be there. Everything hurts. He thinks that may be a good sign, but he isn't quite sure. He should ask Lip, he thinks idly. Lip would know. 

The sound of a woman's voice pulls him back to the moment. She sounds panicked, anxious, and he wonders what happened to make her so upset. He gets to his feet – slowly, because his head is still spinning, his legs still feel wobbly – and looks around. Hadn't Ian and Lip been here too, only a moment ago? He spots Ian, leaning over the open passenger door of the car, wrestling with something inside the vehicle. He's trying to pull Lip out of the car, Carl realizes, and wonders why Lip can't get out by himself. Come to think of it, the car doesn't look so good. The entire passenger side seems to be dented and scratched, he can see that the back window on that side is broken. He doesn't remember it being banged up like this – when did that happen? A sleek SUV is standing at the side of the road, the driver's door open. A woman is walking away from the car, unsteady on her heels. She looks like money, Carl thinks, like a proper grown-up with a proper job. 

She looks shaken and dazed. 

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry," she stammers, taking a step toward Ian as if to touch his arm. "I just – I didn't expect – my car …" She trails off, confused, but Ian abruptly straightens and turns around to give her a closer look. 

"Fuck," he finally says. "You're her, aren't you? The professor Lip was banging." He shakes his head slowly, so slowly, and Carl isn't sure if it's because Ian's neck is hurting or if he's also having a hard time making sense of what's going on. 

"You seriously just crashed into your own car," Ian says. "With your own student in it. Like what the fuck."

The woman stares at him, and something like recognition dawns on her face. "You're Phillip's brother," she says, and Ian nods. 

"Yes," he says, "I am, and you need to call 911 right the fuck now. Get an ambulance." 

Her eyes widen. "Is – is he okay?" she asks, on the verge of panic again, and Ian moves to step between her and the vehicle when she makes an aborted gesture at the car. 

"Call 911," he says again, crowding her backwards, and she nods frantically and starts fumbling with her purse. She staggers onto the sidewalk as she starts talking to her phone, her words loud and agitated, and Carl doesn't understand why she is so upset, wonders what she wants from 911, what Ian needs an ambulance for. Because ambulances are expensive, and Carl is fine, absolutely fine, if he ignores the pain in his wrist and the waves of dizziness behind his eyes. If he ignores the fact that he must have scraped his knee when he tumbled out of the car, that he's got blood slowly trailing down his bare left shin. He's had worse, far worse than that. 

He really should tell Ian that it's not a good idea to call the police. They'll take one look at him and know that he left the state while on parole, and he'll have to go back to prison before he can even blink. They'll find out that Ian skipped work, that Lip has stolen a car, and his professor will be mad when she realizes that her BMW is broken. Why is it broken again? He squints and looks back at the car, the squished-in passenger side, the broken window, the way it sits diagonally in the middle of the street, as if pushed by a superior force. 

Oh fuck. They got into an accident. 

Carl's last coherent thought is that Fiona is going to be so fucking pissed, then he bends over and vomits all over the sidewalk and his bare feet. 

 

**IAN (Sunday, June 28, 5pm)**

"No police," is the first thing Ian says when the professor ends her call and starts dialing again. 

"But insurance …" 

"Hell no," he says. His head hurts, Lip is still behind him in the car, and to his left, Carl is puking into the bushes. This is not what he wants to deal with right now, but it is the mantra they've grown up on, and he repeats it without even having to think. "No police."

She quits what she's doing on her phone and looks at him, and for a moment there is a flash of authority underneath the panic and the messy hair. 

"So you are just going to pay for the medical bills yourself?" she asks snidely. "Don't tell me you've got that money lying around at home, because I know you don't."

"Well, are you prepared to lie to them?" Ian asks, arms crossed in front of his chest, and forces himself not to wince when his neck gives a painful twinge. "Lip's got a record and Carl is on parole, and I'm not going to let you screw things up for them. I'm not going to let you tell the police that we stole and crashed your car just so that you can get your fucking BMW fixed."

She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose with two well-manicured fingers. "Jesus Fucking Christ," she swears, then takes a deep breath. "Let me call the police," she says slowly, as if she's talking to a child, and Ian wonders fleetingly if this is how she talks to her students, "and have them file an accident report for the insurance, so I can get the insurance company to pay for your hospital bill. You don't know what –" Her eyes dart back to the car, and she breaks off in the middle of the sentence, shakes her head. "I'll figure something out, okay?" 

Ian opens his mouth, to say what, he isn't sure; but the ambulance driving up with flashing lights takes the decision off his hands. Carl is pale and reeks of vomit, and Ian hugs him tightly to his side as they watch two EMTs move Lip out of the car and into the back of the ambulance. Lip is still unconscious, and the EMTs politely evade Carl's panicked repetition of "Is he alright?" Ian refuses to think about what that means, when they've only just started to work things out, when they're only just figuring out how to be brothers again. He and Lip are not done yet, not by a long shot. 

The EMT who shines a light into their eyes makes Carl ride in the ambulance as well, because she's worried that he may have hit his head, and Ian doesn't tell her that concussed is Carl's normal state of being, or that he's still got two cups of blueberry tequila in his bloodstream. Instead, he squeezes Carl's shoulder, tells him to take care of Lip, and promises to meet him at the hospital, then steps back and helplessly watches the ambulance drive off.

He sits down heavily at the side of the road and can't even bring himself to go and intervene when the police shows up and the professor walks over to meet them. Ian's got to leave it to her: She is clearly still freaked out, but her voice is firm when she tells the officer that she asked a student to go fetch her car from campus as a favor to her, that she wasn't paying attention while pulling out of her driveway, that this is all her fault and of course she's not going to press charges. 

The officer just writes everything down, gives her a reassuring smile, and doesn't question her story at all, and Ian thinks that this is what talking to the police is like for the rich – the easy trust in _to serve and protect_ , no fear that the officers won't believe them, that they'll be led off in handcuffs, that there will be consequences their lawyer won't be able to get them out of for an appropriate fee. 

In the end, she thanks the man with a shy look from underneath her lashes and sets a hand on his elbow, a beautiful farce if Ian's ever seen one. And just like that, the cop agrees to drive them to the hospital, and doesn't even bother to ask about the strange boy in the back seat who's got someone else's blood on his shirt and his forehead pressed against the window.

At the hospital, the professor smoothly negotiates their way into the ER and ignores the angry stares the people in the waiting room throw them for cutting the line. They find Carl sitting on a gurney with a band-aid on his knee and a bottle of yellow Gatorade in his hand, and a nurse looking down at him with that air of bemusement that most even-tempered people adopt around Carl. 

"They won't tell me anything about Lip," Carl reports dejectedly, "because I'm not an adult. But he did wake up in the ambulance and told me not to get the police involved, so if he's got brain damage, at least he's not as bad off as Karen, I guess." 

The nurse and the professor throw him wide-eyed looks, and Ian snorts and puts an arm around Carl's neck, pretending not to feel relieved when Carl immediately leans into him instead of pushing him away. 

"I also called Fiona," Carl adds quietly, face buried in his shirt, and Ian feels the bottom of his stomach drop out. Shit. 

"Good thinking," he says steadily, because it's not like putting it off will make this any easier, and he knows Fiona won't forgive them if they don't let her be there for them when they are hurt. 

The nurse has been conversing quietly with the professor, and looks Carl up and down with a sigh. 

"You guys can wait for your family in the seating area upstairs," she says, a bit uncertainly, as if she isn't quite sure what to do with them. "Just remember to make sure your mom checks in with us when she gets here."

They don't even bother to correct her, just say thank you and make a run for the elevators, the professor trailing after them, still with that strange expression on her face. If she wonders why they know their way around the hospital so well, she doesn't ask. She does go and fetch coffee from the vending machine for them without being asked, then settles into her seat in the waiting area with her own plastic cup and a fashion magazine that she skims through without really looking at the pages. 

Ian doesn't want to ask, but he isn't quite sure why she's here: If she's actually concerned about Lip, or worried that they'll cause trouble for her, or if she simply thinks it's the proper thing to do. Still, when he sees her shooting him yet another look over the top of her magazine, eyes somewhere between calculating and confused, he raises his head and stares back. 

"What?" he asks, challenge in his voice, and she actually flinches, as if she didn't think she would be caught. 

"Nothing," she says finally, a bit hesitant. "Just – I always thought Phillip was making things up when he talked about his family."

She sounds like she's telling the truth, but Ian has no idea what it's supposed to mean. Clearly they aren't what she expected, but he has no idea whether that's a good thing or bad, or what Lip may have told her to make her think he was lying. Lip could have told her that he was raised by a herd of Icelandic cave trolls, for all Ian knows. 

He's ready to let it go, not prepared to deal with that kind of thing right now - or ever -, but Carl frowns at her, brows drawn together. 

"So does your husband not like sex, or is he gay?" he asks, and she actually chokes on her coffee. 

"Excuse me?" she asks incredulously. "Why would you say that?"

Carl shrugs. "Well, Lip said that he watched you bang sometimes. I mean, it's cool, my ex-girlfriend didn't like sex either, because of that thing with the biker gang. And the dad of my sister's ex-boyfriend was gay, and he was married too, so he had sex with Ian instead." He pauses, thoughtfully. "Then Ian's boyfriend beat him up, and then he crashed with us and tried to have sex with Lip, and Lip kicked him off the bed. So, you know," he smiles, as if the professor isn't staring at him, mouth agape. "Just trying to figure out which one it is."

In the seat behind them, a man gets up so hastily that he almost trips over his own feet as he flees. The professor makes an odd, helpless noise, and Ian can't help himself: he starts laughing and doesn't stop until tears start pooling in his eyes, and Carl is beginning to look concerned. 

His phone dings with a text message, and he opens it without even checking the number, because it could be Fiona, it could be a nurse, it could be anyone needing to get a hold of him. 

_Glad u came 2 visit_ , the message reads, and it takes him an embarrassingly long time until it registers that Mickey actually sent him a text. His hand tightens around the phone in an almost painful grip. A drop of water lands on the screen, and it's only when he moves his thumb to swipe it away that he realizes he's crying. 

"Are you okay?" Carl asks, sounding earnestly worried now, and Ian tries to give him a reassuring smile. 

"Yeah, fine," he says, his voice cracking somewhere in the middle, whether from crying or from laughing, he doesn't quite know. 

In his hand, his phone announces the arrival of another text, and Ian clicks it open, his fingers working on auto-pilot. 

_call me sometime_ , the text reads. Ian takes a shuddering breath and stares at the message for a long moment. Then he dials and raises the phone to his ear. 

Just as he hears the first ring, there is a commotion at the end of the hallway, and Carl is climbing to his feet. 

From down the hallway, Ian sees Debbie running towards them, long hair loose and cheeks red from exertion; behind her, Fiona looks just as disheveled and panicked, Liam traipsing along on her hand, bewildered and confused. Carl meets them halfway and is wrapped up in a tearful embrace by his siblings, almost disappearing under a blanket of dark and red curls, Liam clinging to one of his legs. 

Slowly, Ian gets to his feet, phone pressed to his ear. In the background, he can see Kev and V appear around the corner, and he raises his free hand, not quite sure if he means to wave at them or wipe tears from his eyes. 

Beside him, the professor straightens in her seat, looking uncomfortable and out of place. 

On the other end of the line, the call connects, and Ian exhales. 

"Hey there," he says, and lets Mickey hear his voice break.


End file.
